No Happy Endings
by Alkeni
Summary: Lying there in Illyria's arms, dying in Vail's Manor...Wesley realizes just how illusory the happy ending is. For all who take a stand against the darkness, there are no happy endings. Angst, Character Death


**Disclaimer:** I don't own Buffy, I don't own Angel.

This is a midly depressing idea that just came to me – I was watching various Angel fan music videos, and this just kind of came to mind. I threw it together and put it up – not meant to be anything more than a plot bunny turned oneshot

No Happy Endings

By Alkeni

"Would you like me to lie to you now?" Wesley heard Illyria ask the question, her voice soft, for once her tone lacking the commanding, arrogant quality he'd grown so used to. It was almost...

He could feel his life leaving him, feel that small trickle of blood going down the side of his forehead...her hand cradled his head. For the briefest of moments, he could pretend Fred was still here, still with him...and if he told her yes, that briefest of moments could be just a touch longer.

But did he want her to lie to him? Would it be enough?

Time seemed to slow down in his mind, as his thoughts raced along the paths in his mind. If she lied...if she was Fred, just as he died...he could feel an illusion of happiness, a happiness that had escaped him since Illyria had hollowed out Fred, had turned her into the shell she wore like others wore clothes...

One moment of happiness, illusory as it was, before he died...he was sorely tempted. But...

_There are no happy endings, in this line of work._

It was something Giles had told him, once...in the summer of Buffy's death...he'd spoken to the other Englishman...Giles had called him, drunk late at night, from England. Wesley had only been a Watcher to a Slayer for a short time...but Giles didn't really have any other options of who to talk to...the rest of the Council had even less capacity to understand than he had.

Wesley remembered resisting that statement, part of him, even after everything, believing that one way or another, there was a happy ending in the future – not just for him, but for his friends.

But now...now he understood it.

Everyone...those he'd met, and those he'd hadn't...

Doyle, dying a hero's death perhaps, but without ever having had the courage to tell Cordelia how he'd felt about her, until the end...

Fred, slowly killed from within, an ancient demon using her as a means to cheat death...and Illyria hardly understood the concept of the happy ending...happiness was an alien concept to her, for now.

Gunn – complicit in Fred's death, consumed by guilt, as willing as Wesley had been to throw it all away on this last futile fight...still filled with all that demonic and legal knowledge – knowledge he didn't want, wanted to lose, remembering the price he'd paid to keep it...

Spike...fallen in love with a Slayer, one that he certainly couldn't have...died heroically, only to come back. A knack for survival, but...what was there for him?

Cordelia – torn to pieces by the visions..risen to higher power...hijacked and forced to sleep with a boy she'd seen once as son...used merely as a vessel for a terrible being with an evil purpose...left only one day for closure, unable to get back what she had lost, what had been taken from her...

And Angel...with Cordelia gone...with Fred dead...determined to bring the gears to halt, just once...faced with the futility of what he faced in Wolfram and Hart...the compromises he'd made...what he'd done to everyone, to save Connor – for all the good it had done, in the end.

Lorne – never a fighter, he'd be betraying Lindsey, after fighting on his side...every time he tried to leave this, go back to his old work...it wouldn't last

Not a single happy ending among them – and even if one of them lived through all this, through the Senior Partner's wrath...

None would come. There were none in this line of work – Buffy, forced to live not the normal life she craved but the life of a Slayer, dying and coming back, relationships that had always crashed and burned littered in her wake. Willow, now always teetering on the edge of slipping back into her addiction to dark magic, her lover killed by an errant bullet...

Xander, the normal one, his own former fiance dead, an eye gone, but still doggedly determined to stay in a fight that he had no place in.

Giles – Jenny had been killed by Angelus...even his relationship with Buffy was strained, in this new era of many Slayers...

Wesley could recount the litany of them all – every happiness lost after it was only just fully realized...taking a stand against the darkness, against evil, against despair in the face of terrible odds– it was a bold move, but one that came with a price of ultimate sorrow, loneliness and a despair all its own.

Wesley's mind returned to the now, bare seconds gone as his mind had wandered.

With the last of his energy, Wesley shook his head. "No...no." He looked at her intently, his vision a little blurry now, "Its the bitter irony, now...that I die, and you continue on." Wesley closed his eyes, feeling the darkness creeping in around him at all sides. He waited for death to claim him.

It didn't tarry.


End file.
